This was the moment a routine visit to the hospital due to an earache turned into the stuff of nightmares.

When doctors examined a man complaining of earache in the city of Dongguan, in the southern Chinese region of Guangdong Province, the discovered that the source of his agony was a cockroach. Worse still, the insect had given birth to 25 babies inside his ear.

19-year-old Mr Li had woken up in the night complaining of a painful and itchy right ear

According to The People’s Daily Online and TVS, 19-year-old Mr Li had woken up in the night complaining of a painful and itchy right ear.

When Yang Jing, a doctor at Chang'an Xiaobian Hospital, peered inside, he said he "saw an insect-shaped object blocking his ear canal completely." Dr Yang, talking to TVS, said he extracted the female roach from the ear, with the insect measuring 0.3 inches long.

Yet that was not the end of proceedings inside Mr Li's ear. Dr Yang then found 25 baby cockroaches inside the ear canal, with doctors assuming the female roach had laid the eggs inside Mr Li's ear several weeks earlier.

A female cockroach can carry a capsule contain around 40 eggs, with the development into adults from egg taking around three to four months.

According to reports, the doctor told Mr Li that if he had come to the hospital any later his ear "would have been destroyed".